In the wake of the death threats that weren't at ANU, several people sent FOI requests to the University of East Anglia asking for copies of the death threats that they said Phil Jones had received. The relevant emails have now been released and can be seen here

Be warned, this is very, very ugly stuff, and there are several messages in there that seem to me to be criminal.

Reader Comments (172)

The language of the emails give some hints as to the nationality of their senders. Here is a quick (unchecked) look. Most seem to be US in origin, one Canadian, four Australian or UK. The remainder, no obvious (to me) clue as to nationality.

The last two are not US, unless the vocabulary of the US underclass has expanded recently - which, with the internet, is not impossible. The word was not in the US vocabulary at least until the 1980's.

In the 1970's, the CEO of the Wang (US) computer company took some convincing that "Wang Care" would not be a good choice of name for its customer support organisation.

I noted while visiting you own thread on this thread that the commenter you quoted above so approvingly ended with an important line which you omitted. After the obligatory swipe at Delingpole your commenter ended with,

"There are plenty of historical precedents of this kind of hateful targetting of outgroups. None of them are pretty..."

You seem to be an intelligent guy, so I am puzzled by your inability to understand why it is the diverse band of "skeptics" on climate issues who are the endangered, menaced "outgroup" here, in every relevant way. We are bullied, harassed, menaced, defiled all over the place. The "messages" which pour out continually in the media and policy worlds from abusive activists, academics, policy officials, and many activist-scientists like Mann and friends are extreme in their attempts to deprive us of any legitimacy or place in democratic politics.

On the one hand, we have a bunch of nutty abusive emails, nearly all (likely) sent from thousands of miles away, few with any hint of a credible threat. Reasonable, decent people condemn these types of messages but ALSO condemn your dishonest attempts to smear all "CAGW skeptics" with bad words from a few anonymous fools.

There is a great asymmetry of faux concern from you and your disciples.

For on the other hand, we have the real and continual, massive verbal abuses (and worse) of "skeptics" of whatever ilk in the climate debates. You and your disciples habitually invoke the (holocaust) "denier" meme to smear everyone in your way. You strive to discredit and demoralize us, to deprive us of any legitimate say in these public policy matters. Huge numbers of people are bullied, abused, and menaced into silence or web anonymity with threats to our jobs, our well-being, our livelihoods.

WE (varied as we are, the dissenters from climate orthodoxy) are the threatened "outgroup" here. Do you ever raise your voice against the countless abuses of "skeptics"?? From what I have seen you are instead a prominent malevolent conductor of such abuses on the web.

As to where the initial set and subsequent set of emails came from, I found interesting the following comment by Steve McIntyre at WUWT: {all emphasis by JW}

Steve McIntyre says: June 13, 2012 at 10:34 pm

[ . . . ]

Also if you order the emails by date, there is one batch between Nov 22 and Nov 25 that have UK date sequence; the ,later ones have US date sequence – one batch around Nov 27-28 and the other batch from Feb 7, 2010 on. The

The writer of the first batch definitely seems to have watched Alex Jones. A Nov 23 email mentions climategate which was mentioned by ALex Jones that day:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yis2loKSLFY.

In the good old days the team would have lived in France, their lies would have been discovered, they would have been manacled, led through a crowd of abusers who would not only throw profanities but also rotten fruit. Then they would have been decapitated, now that was real justice ^.^

The U.N. is funneling millions of dollars worth of tradable carbon credits to corrupt nations worldwide, including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Uzbekistan in an attempt to encourage clean energy projects in the developing world.

The U.N. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is defined in Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. Western European countries fund energy projects in the developing world in order to obtain Certified Emission Reduction credits (CERs), tradable credits that enable Europeans to count foreign emission reductions towards their own domestic emission reduction targets.

On 7 February 2010, the Telegraph said "...he is still receiving death threats, with two more arriving last week after the deputy information commissioner delivered his verdict"..The deputy information commissioner, on 29 January 2010, "delivered his verdict"..So two "death threats" were said by the Telegraph, to have been delivered after 29 January 2010 and before 7 February 2010.

None of the emails released have a date in this range, although there are two emails with no dates given.

My conclusion:The statement that Phil Jones received two death threats after the deputy information commissioner "delivered his verdict" has not been confirmed and there seems reason to doubt it.

The UEA has now responded to another FOI request for death threat emails, including the two referred to in the Telegraph.

The response includes the following:

...Additionally, pursuant to your rights under section 1(1)(a) of Freedom of Information Act 2000 to be informed whether information is held, we do not hold some of the requested information. Specifically, we do not hold any recorded information that identifies the two death threats "... that arrived after the information commissioner delivered his "verdict"" We certainly received abusive email directed at Prof. Jones during the relevant timeframe but we do not have any recorded information that identifies exactly what Prof. Jones was referring to in his statement quoted in the Telegraph of 7 February 2010.

Evidence for these two "death threats" mentioned in the Telegraph is evidently nonexistent. It seems certain that their existence was not verified by the Telegraph reporter. In view of recent history, it seems reasonable to conclude that this was a fabrication, aimed gaining the "Poor Phil" sympathy vote.

I have no doubt there are enough raving nutters out there that these are probably almost all real, though I do not discount the possibility that some could be false flag ops.

What about you, Mr. Montford? Surely, you have received some vile ramblings on occasion? I would suspect that the number of death threats one receives is directly proportional to one's impact on the discussion.

I would not write hatemail to Phil Jones and nor would I call you a piece of shit which is the compliment you paid to me earlier. However yes I am glad Phil Jones had his cage rattled for a change since reasoned argument, FOI requests and politeness do not seem to have any effect.[Snip - Godwin]